Featured Artists

DUNIESKY MARTÍN

Born 1983, Cuba. Lives and works in Havana, Cuba.

Duniesky Martín´s work revolves around social components such as the collective imaginary, the historical memory, esthetic paradigms, and cultural stereotypes. He has developed his work in different media such as drawing, painting, video, installation, and environment. He is considered, by specialized critics, as a "multidisciplinary artist" within Contemporary Cuban Art.

Martín graduated from the Instituto Superior de Arte in 2012 and is currently Professor and Head of the Department of Painting, Faculty of Visual Arts at the University of the Arts (ISA) in Havana. His works belong to the background of different collections in Cuba, England, United States, Netherland, Canada, Switzerland, and Italy. With his work he has participated in several Art Biennials and collective exhibitions like Rendez-vous 17, Biennial de Lyon, France, (2017); La carne de los dioses, Evolución Gallery, Lima, Peru; Il Primato Dello Sguardo, Palacio de Cultura Antonello da Messina, Sicilia, Italy (2016); Havana’s 12th Biennial Collateral Display, Historical Military Park Morro Cabaña, Havana City, Cuba (2015); 4th International Biennial Fin del Mundo, Casa del Puente, Mar del Plata City, Argentina; 6to Salón de Arte Cubano Contemporáneo, Fototeca de Cuba, Havana City; Stealing base: Cuba at bat, Oglethorpe University Museum of Art, Atlanta, USA (2014); 7th International Biennial of Curitiba, Oscar Niemeyer Museum, Curitiba, Brazil (2013); 11th Biennial of Havana, Havana City, Cuba (2012); Spray, ARTLAB21-Hoschhaus Hansa, Dortmund, Germany (2011); and Video cubano, The 8th Floor, New York, USA (2010). He has been in different artistic residences like Vermont Studio Center, USA (2017), Batiscafo International Residency for Cuban and Latin-American artists, Triangle Art Trust y Gasworks of Great Britain in Havana, Cuba (2010). Memoria Perfecta was his most recent personal exhibition in Centro de Desarrollo de las Artes Visuales, Havana City, Cuba (2014). Martin has lectured on his artistic career at The University of Barcelona, Spain and at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), Providence, United States.

EMILIO PEREZ

Born 1972, USA. Lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

Rhythm, movement and intuition are in abundance in Emilio Perez’s works, revealing an interest in music, as well as a fascination with the forces of nature. Known as a painter's painter, combining the inherent aspects of painting with drawing in his unique stylistic process. His work is a combination of the spontaneity and expressiveness of painting (purposefully in its loosest form) and the immediacy and graphic quality of drawing. Energetic and intensely layered, his art is made using a distinctive stylistic process that combines painting, cutting and drawing. The artist generates his kinetic imagery by pushing paint in across a canvas, building layer over layer, and then going back into the painting to "draw" with a blade cutting his marks. Melding foreground and background, Perez's hand- cut marks ebb and flow between layers like the fluidity of ocean currents.

Perez attended Pratt Institute and University of Florida's New World School of the Arts. Perez's works can be found in the permanent collections of the PAMM - Perez Art Museum, Miami; Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo; Fundación ARCO, Madrid and Arkansas Art Center, Little Rock; and in corporate collections, internationally. The artist's paintings were featured in the Critical Gestures, PAMM, Miami; 12th Havana Biennial; Topographies at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo; and Signs of the Apocalypse/Rapture at the Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago. Perez had solo exhibitions with Galerie Lelong in both New York and Paris and has been featured in group exhibitions in Dusseldorf, Philadelphia, Houston and St. Louis, among others.

LESLIE SARDIÑAS

Born 1974, Cuba. Lives and works in New York City.

Cuban artist Leslie Sardiñas works across a variety of mediums in his New York City studio, from drawing to performance. Of central concern to Sardiñas is the relationship between the United States and Cuba – both in terms of the immigrant experience and the geopolitical chess game that has played out between the two for over a century. As a point of entry into these complex issues, he often employs the motif of the sea as a way to explore the ideas of boundaries, economic and cultural exchange, and transnational communication. Sardiñas has been exhibited around the world at institutions like the Museum of Fine Arts of Havana and the Florence Biennale and can also be found in many prominent collections, including the Spanish Royal Collection and the Melia Cohiba Collection.

RACHEL VALDÉS CAMEJO

Born 1990, Cuba. Lives and works in Havana, Cuba.

Rachel Valdés is committed to the aesthetic experience, without only considering a single way of doing it. For her, it is essentially about activating the greatest number of symbols, encourage new understandings and meanings to appear in the midst of a growing universe of images becoming increasingly appealing, radiated by all possible means and not necessarily leading to the enjoyment, order, and existence of an open, plural and transparent way of thinking. She draws on everything that appeals to her intellectual, affective, and cultural interests. Her academic education was democratic enough that she is not limited by the requirements of specific genre, but rather can explore the most diverse paths of creation. Rachel has traveled through vast territories of painting, drawing, and photography. With the same strength and passion, she explores the geography of sculpture, objects, and installations, treating the last as a summa, a compendium of research and investigation about the perception and correlation between subject and creation, author and spectator, intimacy and circumstantial environments. She does not agree with the idea of delivering the spectator something immovable and closed, but prefers to take on the risks of participation and complicity, almost from the time of production and assembly. She can be seen at the site, attending to every last detail, outlining processes, securing the frame of delicate and complex structures, and having that rich social experience as an effective antidote against any sign of isolation or alienation.